Washington Post fashion reporter Ashley Fetters Maloy naturally pleases the paper's liberal readership by injecting liberal politics into the stories about clothes. The latest was about Charlie Kirk's widow Erika Kirk, who is apparently dressing too glamorously as she takes over her assassinated husband's job of running Turning Points USA. The headline:
Erika Kirk is walking a fine line in a glittering pantsuit
Her recent outfits are making a statement: Take her seriously, but don’t take her for a career woman.
The Robin Givhan energy is there -- grade the fashion on which political side they're taking. Maloy started with a talk Erika gave at the Young Women's Leadership Conference in Texas:
Feminists want you on antidepressants, she warned; they want you to feel anxious about your career. Aiding Kirk in hammering home this femininity-over-feminism theme: her pink-and-white minidress, which featured a large-format floral print and rhinestones and a pussy bow and puffy lantern sleeves and a shoulder ruffle and a scalloped hem. A dress that, in other words, could not have been more perfectly 21st-century girly-chic if it tried.
Maloy thinks it's more common for political women to dress in a bland pantsuit like Hillary or Kamala. But Erika Kirk isn't running for office. She's leading a youth movement. Maloy's also hinting at hypocrisy -- as she dresses to distinguish herself from the feminists, the widow is leaving her babies behind like a feminist.
Column: Erika Kirk, a mother to two toddlers, continues to take on public-facing leadership duties while promoting traditional ideas about prioritizing marriage and motherhood.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 10, 2026
Here’s how her clothes are attempting to walk the same line: https://t.co/v2ToX0lwor pic.twitter.com/hPX0R1ndhd
As Kirk’s face has appeared on more and more screens — on CBS, on Fox, on podcasts and panels — two common refrains have emerged among observers: While you’re on this publicity tour, who’s parenting your kids? and Why is that suit so sparkly?
They’re not unrelated, those two inquiries. Kirk, a mother to two toddlers, continues to take on public-facing leadership duties while promoting traditional ideas about prioritizing marriage and motherhood, and her clothes are attempting to walk the same high wire.
Maloy finished by quoting the New Testament and throwing in The Handmaid's Tale, like your garden-variety leftist hack:
Perhaps the most telling look of Kirk’s winter press tour came at a New York Times event at Lincoln Center in December. Speaking onstage, Kirk wore a long, ribbed charcoal sweaterdress with a matching turtleneck capelet.
Her long blond hair was draped thick and straight over her shoulders, evoking the 1 Corinthians 11:15 look popular in certain circles of Christianity (“If a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering”). The comparisons to the sinister and cape-clad Commanders’ wives on the Hulu show The Handmaid’s Tale arrived swiftly.
PS: Last October, Maloy boosted the Portland anti-ICE radicals with the story “How inflatable frog suits became the protest fashion statement of the year.”
If an officer were to harass a peaceful protester in a wiener-dog costume or a unicorn suit, though, “It just makes the violence really kind of clear, who’s doing it,” [Brooks] Brown says. “Like, you’re trying to call the Insurrection Act on Barney the Dinosaur and SpongeBob?” So late last week, Brown and a few of his colleagues and friends created Operation Inflation, an organization providing puff-up costumes, like Thanksgiving Day parade balloons in miniature, to those protesting the crackdown by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
